This month, Alaska joined Maine in using Ranked Choice Voting statewide, and became the first state to use RCV in a general election for both state and federal offices. And just last week, the Alaska Division of Elections live-streamed the RCV tabulation and election results. You can view the full livestream HERE. We applaud the Alaska Division of Elections for its transparency and excellent education program in preparing voters to use RCV statewide. As almost 80% of Alaskan voters reported RCV to be “simple” to use, they clearly succeeded in those efforts. And we congratulate our colleagues at Alaskans for Better Elections on a successful and smooth implementation.
As you might have heard, Representative Mary Peltola (D), the first Alaska Native and first woman to represent Alaska in the House after a special election in August, was just re-elected to a full term last week, along with Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) and Governor Mike Dunleavy (R). Peltola performed even better in this election, earning close to 49% of first-choice votes and almost 55% in the final round. Murkowski defeated Trumped-backed Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka 53.7% to 46.3% in the third round. Dunleavy won re-election outright with a 50.3% of the vote. For a great interactive display of Alaska's ranked-choice results, go to: https://rcvis.com/pv/alaska-2022. You can see each round, showing how ballots are transferred to second choices when a first choice has been eliminated, and demonstrating how winners earned majority support.
Both Peltola and Murkowski understood that Ranked Choice Voting rewards candidates who build the broadest coalitions of voter support. They did that by rejecting negative campaign tactics and actively campaigning for second and third choice votes from their opponents’ supporters. Indeed they both crossed party lines to endorse each other and were rewarded with sufficient second-choice and third-choice votes to earn majority support and win.
And perhaps most importantly, all nine Democrats and eight of 11 Republicans elected to the Alaska Senate formed a bipartisan majority coalition, leaving three far-right extremists in the minority. In the 20-person Senate, 11 votes are needed to elect a leader and conduct business. This bipartisan coalition shows that RCV not only changes the tenor of campaigns but also, importantly, changes the incentives of officials once in office –– encouraging them to build consensus and get things done.
